The ValueCloud garners new industry category – Customer Value Management

DecisionLink announced that the DecisionLink ValueCloud has been named and certified by Vendor Neutral in a brand new category: customer value management. Customer value management (CVM) uses metrics to ensure high levels of value are delivered to every customer based on their needs throughout the life of the relationship. Managing customer value as a practice and with an enabling application allows enterprises to treat customer value as a strategic asset and win business and retain customers more often; decrease discounting, accelerate deal cycles, market and showcase value, price more effectively and reduce churn. DecisionLink’s ValueCloud® augments CRM systems and efforts by providing the missing link to elevating conversations, establishing “trusted advisor” status with customers, and forging long term customer relationships.

“Customer relationship management is at a tipping point,“ said Nancy Nardin, founder of Smart Selling Tools and co-founder for Vendor Neutral. “Enhancing CRM by managing customer relationships based on value promised and value delivered is the next level strategic advantage for today’s enterprise organizations to succeed and win, and the ultimate differentiation when competing for business.”

The need for the discipline is further evidenced by big-brand solution companies embracing customer value management and subscribing to DecisionLink’s ValueCloud®. In each of the last 10 competitive battles, DecisionLink’s ValueCloud has been declared a winner over simpler less comprehensive “value selling” tools. Brands like Caterpillar, CrowdStrike, DocuSign, Marketo and most recently ServiceNow, to name a few, are turning to ValueCloud to enable go-to-market transformation by enabling higher level conversations focused on value versus price. ValueCloud® is helping companies achieve “trusted advisor status” in the early stages of the relationship, throughout the implementation when value can be checked, and at the later stages at renewal time, when value achievement can be validated.

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“CVM is inherently customer centric and helps reps sell strategic advantage to senior executives and justify investments to line of business and procurement staff,” said Gerry Murray, Research Director, Sales Technology for IDC. “Delivering value on the customer’s terms is essential to customer experience. Vendors that directly and continuously measure value will be much harder to beat than those who only take early snapshots of customer sentiment.”

DecisionLink’s ValueCloud was recently selected by ServiceNow following an intensive evaluation of possible solutions. “We are on a multi-year journey to strengthen our Value Management practices into a strategic capability, “ said Chris Dowse, Global Sr. Director, Value Insights, ServiceNow. “We selected DecisionLink’s ValueCloud to accelerate our journey and magnify the impact of our Value Consultants on revenue growth and customer success. We are consistently impressed by DecisionLink’s collaboration and commitment to customer success. Their value DNA and market-leading software has given us confidence to set more aggressive goals for our Value Management initiative.”

Another client, VMware, who is focused on ensuring lower churn and is implementing a Customer for Life program had this to say: “We selected ValueCloud® from DecisionLink to enable VMware’s End User Computing ‘Customer for Life Mission’; the entire program is centered on value – identifying it, communicating it and ensuring it is achieved,” said Mike Maxey, Senior Director of World-Wide Sales, Emerging Products for VMware.

DocuSign is so serious about CVM and enabling teams for value-rich customer conversations quickly, they’ve created a self-serve function using ValueCloud®. The head of Customer Value Management at DocuSign – Ran Haimoff, had this to say about the speed and scale the ValueCloud® delivers: “With ValueCloud® our account managers can create a high quality, value hypothesis for any account in mere minutes.”

Jim Berryhill, the CEO and founder for DecisionLink said, “We believe customer value is at the core of every good Customer Relationship yet determined there was a lack of tools that deliver visibility and manageability across an enterprise, into this important and strategic asset. And we believe that the shift companies are making from product companies to solution companies demand ‘value-based’ discussions in order to achieve the goal of ‘trusted advisor’ status; without value there can be no meaningful relationship in business.”

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“Our platform facilitates the expectations, agreement, and realization of customer value across the entire customer journey,” explained John Porter, CTO and co-founder for DecisionLink.

In addition, Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Joe Sexton, has joined DecisionLink as Executive Advisor to the CEO and investor. Most recently, Mr. Sexton led the growth of AppDynamics to a successful $3.7 B exit to Cisco. He is on the Board of Directors of Crowdstrike and Executive Advisory Board of PagerDuty, both companies with massive IPOs in the past year. He had this to say: “I’ve been looking for someone to deliver an enterprise application for value selling and management. I have been following DecisionLink for some time. They’ve broken the code with ValueCloud. CVM is the next great market category. I feel so passionately about the need for CVM, I’ve invested in DecisionLink and joined their team to help make it happen.”

DecisionLink is also announcing ValueCloud integration with Customer Success Management leader Gainsight. With integration specifications developed in conjunction with 10 key Gainsight Customers including DocuSign, VMware and ProCore, DecisionLink will provide six primary areas of synergy delivered by ValueCloud for Gainsight clients.

Nick Mehta, Gainsight CEO recently observed that, “One of the biggest trends I see in larger companies moving to Customer Success is helping Technical Account Managers (TAMs) become more proactive and turn into CSMs.” The integration of DecisionLink ValueCloud® Value Achievement Tracker with Gainsight’s Customer Success Platform provides an unparalleled level of capability for Customer Success branded as “Better Together.”

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